Mr Motivator
Leading teams is challenging and motivation is a huge factor to success.
Throw in a pandemic; move your entire workforce out of the office, set everyone up to work from home with short notice, then carry on delivering an awesome service and a successful business ... and the challenge to inspire and motivate your people (and yourself) becomes even more prominent.
So let's start with the basics... we all get why motivation is important: Motivated teams are likely to stay longer, be productive, deliver quality service, go the ‘extra mile’, all while being happy and engaged.
But motivation isn’t something you learn once. You don’t just read a book and suddenly you are highly motivated and able to motivate other people. It's something that takes practice and it is definitely not stagnant.
To refresh my understanding and refocus on the fundamentals of motivation, I am revisiting some words that I wrote for an article a couple of years ago...
What Is Motivation?
Motivation is a desire and energy to fully commit to a role, subject, task or goal. It is something that you can affect but you can not give it or take it away.
Motivation has factors (internal and external) that you can influence in a person, but you are not wholly responsible for making somebody motivated. Motivation is something that individuals have to own for themselves.
Managers and leaders play a big part in creating the right structure and culture to foster a motivated workforce.
How we lay down the foundations to foster a motivated workplace differs between regions, countries, sales, tech support, night shifts, market sector etc., but the principles remain the same.
What Motivates People?
With so many factors affecting the unique nature of personal motivation, it can be difficult to pinpoint someone’s motivation… but with a basic understanding of the main principals it is easier.
What Motivates You Won’t Necessarily Motivate Others.
Just because you get motivated by jumping out of bed in the morning, doing yoga in the sun, before a 10km run, then settling down to a bowl of quinoa, doesn't mean anyone else on your team will.
Some people are motivated by money. Others by philanthropy. Some ‘just like doing a good job’ and some want to climb the career ladder. When you start breaking down your people’s needs and wants even more, it becomes a whole new level of complicated, but it’s worth doing, at least with your direct subordinates.
It is worth spending the time to understand what your team’s motivations are. On an individual level take the time to break it down and pinpoint motivations (because there are probably more than one!)
- Why do they want the money?
- Why do they like doing a good job?
- Why did they get out of bed and get to work on time today?
- What are their career goals?
Once we realise that motivation is not a one-size-fits-all thing, we have to adapt. We have to offer a number of initiatives that help to motivate. It has to become part of who we are and our culture. There is only so long you can keep offering bonuses before it becomes a standard expectation and stops being motivating.
How Do You Motivate Someone?
If you want some quick and easy tips to motivate your team just do an internet search and you’ll find loads. However, it will be a short-term fix that will only take you so far. To create a motivational strategy that’s long lasting, you’ll need to focus on some key themes: Reward, Empower and Inspire.
Reward
It’s not all carrot and stick. You can’t play off ‘giving people things’ (cash mainly) against the ‘threat of not hitting targets’. More Money Does not Equal Harder Workers
Motivation is not all about reward and punishment. You can’t just keep giving out higher bonuses every year in the hope the workforce will feel more motivated. That’s not to say rewards don’t have a place, but they should not form the main tool of your motivational strategy. Use rewards wisely.
Focus on ‘now-that’ rewards – these are the rewards that are a surprise to the person, because they learn about it after the event. “Well done for smashing it today, here’s a gift.”
Try to limit ‘if–then’ rewards – these are rewards that people are informed of before the event. “If you hit target today you can get another bonus.”
Using ‘if–then’ rewards can lead to a negative impact on a person’s intrinsic motivation (please note, ‘if–then’ rewards can be used effectively in a contact centre environment, but they should only be used occasionally or when people are doing repetitive, non-creative tasks).
Empower
In customer service we need to control some factors - manage resource, hitting the business’s KPIs, keeping costs down, all while pushing up customer sentiment as we are positive representatives and advocates for the company. There is a lot to control but as a leader you must resist the urge to control everything.
Don’t Be Scared to Believe in People – Give Them Independence and Trust
To build a trusting relationship, you have to give people ownership of their role and offer opportunities for the team to work in their own way. Allowing people to find their own way offers a sense of meaningfulness and responsibility, which of course leads to motivation.
The point of trust and empowerment was forced to the forefront of every business recently, as social distancing kicked in with little notice and people were asked to stay at home. As a leader you were nervous about letting your team work at home where you can't see what they are doing, not because you don't think they'll work, but because you're used to managing people face to face and you're not sure how you can be as effective. But I bet they have proven that you were right to trust them and you can have more faith in them. By empowering and trusting your team you let them take more pride and ownership.
A note about control: I mentioned you should resist the urge to control everything, but this doesn't mean having no control at all. Instead you need to work out what is important to control and what isn't, as well as assess what 'control' means to each area (rocks in the jar exercise).
Inspire
As leader it is probably this last point that resonates with me the most. When we feel strongly connected with something it inspires us and provides us with a sense of purpose.
You can set up the best motivational framework, but it could still fail because of you.
Create a purpose, a reason to come to work apart from the money. Become a storyteller and connect a person’s role to the bigger picture, making it clear how important they are (because they really are!) and how they truly can make a difference in the organisation.
Please don’t just use stats! - dry facts alone can be boring. Bring them to life using emotional language and make them mean something by sparking an emotional reaction.
I've been lucky to work for some great businesses that get this (and a few that really don't). At Vitality we really get this, from the top down. We stay connected in our purpose and our values in everything we do. We never veer away from our values in any of our departments, projects, products or services. This is fundamental to who we are and drives us to be great for our people, our members and society.
Stay Safe. Stay Active. Stay Happy.
p.s. if you know any good tips for managing people using MS Teams it'd be appreciated